Author of TURQUOISEBLOOD

The ball of fire grew and grew. His friends put up their hands as meager protection. Dakotah, too far away to do anything, felt stricken, paralyzed.

But the fireball never made it to its destination. Light came suddenly from all directions, brighter than any Divine Light.

No words were spoken and yet he was certain this was the thing that had spoken to him a year ago, when he’d been deciding whether or not to be Guardian. The Voice-with-many-voices, the Seelie power.

Gone for so long from the fey world, Dakotah felt the universe rise up and greet the power. The balance shifted violently into place, sending everyone stumbling. Samantha’s fireball collapsed in on itself, and then the light sprang for the Unseelie Queen.

“–you damned hypocrite,” Samantha cursed. That was all she was able to get out before the light engulfed her.

Dakotah, with his new sensitivity to magic, clapped his hands over his ears. They popped anyway, and he felt the horrible sensation of Samantha being Unmade, component parts pulled apart and returned to the Great Other.

When the pressure faded and the roaring lessened, he heard the voice with many voices order, “Run.”

The Unseelie Court scattered, whooping and howling their terror.

“Dakotah!”

Hands on his back, his head.

“Your arm!”

“Are you ok?”

“Get him up slow!”

His friends hauled him to his feet. He lowered his hands from his ears and blinked his eyes open.

The Unseelie Court had fled but now the field was filled with fey–the bunny army and Seelie warriors. At the end of field two figures stood, ringed in blazing light.

The Seelie prince, freed from his bonds, strode forward. He crossed the distance as fast as propriety allowed, and bowed deeply before his parents.

“You have served us well,” said the voice-with-many-voices.

The prince bowed again and took his place at the right side of the king and queen.

As Dakotah and the others approached, the light faded a bit. No longer blinded, he could make out the queen and king. They were ethereally beautiful, dark-skinned with hair of black feathers, velvet antlers crowning each. Their faces were as moon-shaped as Samantha’s, bodies solid as tree trunks and limbs like branches. He could barely tell them apart, but it did not matter for they spoke with many voices.

“Heroes.” They addressed Phin and Pete. “You have freed us from the usurper. The Court owes each of you one favor.”

Val sucked in her breath in surprise, leading Dakotah to guess this was not to be taken lightly.

“You may accept the favor now, if you join us in Underhill…” Either the king or queen lifted an arm to gesture into the woods.

Pete and Phin shared a look. Before anything else could be said, thought, Val grabbed both their arms.

“We’ll wait on that, thanks.”

Her voice was sharp.

Dakotah thought the voice-with-many-voices carried a lilt of laughter when it responded, “Archivist. We are aware nothing could have been accomplished without your knowledge. We have a gift for you. You may approach.”

Dakotah frowned as Val approached with visible hesitation. What was she so worried about?

When she was close enough, the king or queen extended a hand and laid gentle fingers on Val’s forehead. Barely a breath passed, and they broke apart. Val took a step back.

“You now have the knowledge of the fairy language.”

“Thank you,” said Val. “I am honored.” She bobbed forward in a short bow.

Then she and Pete and Phin stepped back a couple steps, and Dakotah felt the whole weight of the Seelie couple’s attention fall on him.

“Guardian.”

For the four millionth time, he wished Ike were around, this time to tell him how to act in front of royalty.

“For a year you have protected the fey from the chaos that befell our world. You have carried the weight borne by Icarus, never faltering despite the toll.”

Not really accurate, thought Dakotah ruefully. But he’d done the best he could. He was completely at peace with that. He was glad the Seelie could see that, and that they had honored his friends.

The atmosphere changed. He felt it shift like he’d felt the Balance change. The queen and king weren’t pleased.

“Samantha was ruining the Balance. That’s the only reason I got involved in your mess.”

“Your interests align with the Court–”

As they spoke, he felt pressure gather. Not just heavy air, but a magical pressure, testing his will.

He bucked it off with a mental shove, strong enough to clear the air–and send a clear message. It was frightening to face off with a pair who had just dissolved a fairy into Nothing. But Dakotah’s power was of a different sort. He was a pillar in a shifting magic world.

“I will defend the Balance. From ANY influence.”

His words rang out.

“Very well,” said the voice-with-many-voices after a pause. “We accept your ruling. You are truly Icarus’s heir.”

~*~

“D, are you all right?” gasped his mom.

“I fell off Phin’s bike,” Dakotah lied. But the lightning marks on his arm looked like they could be wicked asphalt burn, so the lie might hold.

“Shit, let me get something for that.”

He sat in the kitchen while she went to the bathroom medicine cabinet. Leaning back in his chair, he let the summer sunlight warm him up. Already the world felt fresher. The balance of magic was an everpresent feeling. It calmed him, and he hadn’t even realized he’d been off-kilter.

Well, obviously he’d realized it a little, running around like a crazy person putting out one magical fey fire after another. But now he could breathe a little easier.

And tomorrow he’d be back at his shop, ready for whatever else came his way.

“You’re a pretender to the throne,” Dakotah said. “There’s no balance, and it’s making the fey world unsafe. I have to take you down.”

Queen Samantha cackled a lightning-filled laugh. “Big words, Guardian! Just how will you do what Icarus could not?”

He shifted focus, tapping into the Guardian power of borrowing, which let him take on the power of fey nearby. The area was crowded with fey power but he looked only for Samantha’s…without luck. He felt her magic like a roiling mass but he couldn’t access it, couldn’t even see into its opaque depths.

“Trying a bit of borrowing?” she asked after he’d stood there for a minute like an idiot, unmoving.

The Unseelie Queen raised her arms. Light bloomed around her face–her hair was on fire, the blaze destroying the prairie and little forest. The birds took flight. The little trees stood like charred stalks. A humming filled the air around her, gathering into a fever pitch before it sparked.

Dakotah dove, throwing up his Shield as he went. Lightning burst and blazed around him, blinding him. She hit him again and again. He dashed around, throwing back whatever magic he could borrow from fey in the crowd. Their magic was frail compared to Samantha’s, pinging off of her like BB gun pellets. It was almost like she was absorbing each hit and gaining some kind of strength from it. Putting up his Shield too slowly, she got his arm. Fire caught his clothes and he patted himself down hastily, howling when he smacked at burned skin.

“Run away, Guardian, eventually you’ll be too slow!”

She’s right, he thought. All it would take would be one hit before he put up a shield and that would be that. He needed to be on the offensive.

Stupid Guardians and their stupid no battle magic. Too late he thought he should’ve just brought an iron pole and beaten his way through. It wouldn’t have felt right, he realized. Iron disturbed the fey balance and he wasn’t trying to upset it anymore than it already was.

….Wait…there was an idea.

Putting up his Shield, he felt again for the powers around him. Now that he was looking for it, he felt the imbalance, like a scale weighed down too heavily on one side. He was surprised he’d never noticed before. It was almost like the listing like a busted canoe. He could tell any spell he or anyone else did would be warped by this slippery slope of imbalance. In his case, his magic would be working against this imbalance. In Samantha’s case, her magic would gain some momentum.

But he could already sense what Samantha in her hubris had not yet noticed: too much imbalance and her magic would suffer too, for it drew from both parts–Making and Unmaking being the same, after all.

The Unseelie Queen had been raining blasts of magic at him, apparently for the amusement of her Court, because she’d been changing colors and adding little flourishes like fireworks. The next rippled toward him, sparkling like sun on a lake in summer.

He dropped his Shield.

Samantha’s mouth opened in surprise, and that was the last thing he saw before the magic hit him.

The battle magic still blazed around him with ill intent, but he felt none of the effect. He had left the fey world and was on some other plane, where there was nothing but him and the magic’s component parts. He separated them with a mental swoop of the mind, absorbed the parts he wanted and dissolved the rest, before landing back in the field in front of Queen Samantha.

He didn’t know who was more surprised, the court or their queen. She frowned and shot at him again, another wild lightning strike. He almost snatched it out of the air, separated the parts again and reappeared on the field to an even more dumbfounded Samantha.

“What are you doing?” she demanded.

He shrugged. “I think I’m Guarding the balance.”

She didn’t look like she understood, but he could feel the slightest shift back toward normal; the scales taking a step toward balance.

She rained a few more spells at him, all battle magic, all ill intent, all of the exact kind he was learning to disassemble or absorb or whatever he was doing. She paused to get her breath. He hadn’t reacted at all, but now he was ready. He started toward her, pulling in magic all around himself–not the kind they were short on, the kind Samantha had all too much off. He built and built the power until the air was tight and seizing between himself and the queen.

Her fire had run its course, leaving her head charred and bare and smoking. But as he closed the distance her look changed. Green grass sprouted all over and she smirked.

He didn’t have time to guess what she was thinking. She whipped a spell at him–a curveball. He went to catch it but it wasn’t the same type of magic. Before he could adjust his own magic he was already in motion. He blinked, and found he’d been moved to the other side of the field.

What the hell? he thought, wondering how that helped Samantha.

Then he heard his name. “Dakotah!”

Phin, Pete, and Val had emerged from the cover of the iron tree. They were now across the field from him.

Samantha tossed him a sly grin over her shoulder. Then she raised a ball of fire and hurled it toward his friends.

They paused at the base of the staircase. Here green torches burned at intervals around a low room. On the far wall, iron bars closed in a prison cell. The cell was part dirt, part metal. There were no people, or fey, inside the cell. Instead, an iron ball rested on a tall pillar.

The steady light of the magic torches gave them confidence, and Phin, Pete, and Val moved forward as one to the cell bars.

Pete wrapped her fingers around the bars and pressed her face in close. But the cell was definitely empty, except for that pillar.

“Okay…” said Phin.

“There’s no door,” Val observed.

Pete said, “Shit,” but actually the problem of no door was a preferable one. She had no idea what the deal was with the iron ball, but the bars she could handle.

Phin beat her to it: “We can Create a tool for the task at hand.” He quoted the Hero grimoire.

“Even when there’s no danger?” asked Val with a frown, half-opening her grimoire as if to check the information.

“We don’t know how to operate one. What about a handsaw? Or like a steel rope? Didn’t someone escape using floss once?”

“Too slow,” said Pete, a chainsaw already forming in her hands. “I’ve used one, when we landscaped the backyards. Move.”

Val and Phin backed up.

“Make safety goggles!” Phin said hurriedly just as she was about to pull the starter rope. Pete sighed, but she closed her eyes and breathed in. As she let out her breath, magic formed around her face. It solidified into chemistry-class safety goggles. She fired up the machine. With careful movements, she cut through the top and bottom of four bars.

As the bars clanged to the floor, she set the chainsaw aside and tossed off the goggles.

The three of them crowded into the cell and stood around the iron ball.

“Should I use the chainsaw again?” Pete was mostly joking. But the ball was small and solid-looking. It was roughly made but didn’t have a weld seam or any other chink. Now that they were closer, Pete could see a silver glow flickering around the edges.

“God no,” said Val. “Hang on.”

She opened the Unseelie grimoire. Her fingers flipped through heavy pages filled with diagrams, spells, foreign symbols, and the occasional plant. She stopped at a page with a drawing of a wrought iron bar. “This is the section on iron. I’m looking for imprisonment spells.”

“I don’t know if anything Samantha would use would be in a grimoire for anyone to see,” Phin pointed out.

Pete looked at the dirt ceiling. Suddenly she was filled with worry. “We should hurry.”

Val spared a moment to glare at her, then went back to the book.

Seconds ticked by. Pete tapped her foot.

“Can you at least translate out loud?” suggested Phin.

Val flicked her hair over her shoulder and humphed. “It’s just talking about native powers…you know, like powers that come from what you’re built of? Iron is the antithesis of fey power, because they aren’t, like, built of it. But iron still falls into Making and Unmaking. It’s still part of the natural world. That’s why humans can touch it. So I think basically Samantha molded this little guy,” she pointed to the ball, “with fey magic, and then infused some more magic into it. That’s why it’s kinda glowing.”

“So it’s double-protected, basically?” Phin said sourly.

“Actually, I think that made it weaker. She forced together two things that don’t want to be together.”

Val fell quiet. That was as far as she’d gotten. She didn’t know how to test that theory, or how to exploit the weakness if it was there.

He and Pete held hands on either side of the iron ball. Val stepped back with her book open, but she wasn’t reading. She watched as the light gathered around them.

Pete gave everything to the magic. Her Divine Light hadn’t blazed this bright since she’d faced the vampires. At first, she squeezed her eyes shut. When she felt her feet lift off the ground she opened her eyes.

She was in another world. Not fey or human. An Other-Other, a deeper-magic-from-before-the-dawn-of-time. Everything was brilliantly white. The only things she could see were her brother and the iron ball between them.

“Open,” she and Phin said at the same time.

The iron ball started to vibrate. It became a gray blur, and then its iron-and-magic makeup simply–fell apart.

All their heads went up toward the voice, and then they all turned back to Dakotah.

“Fuck,” said Phin.

Dakotah had the same thought.

“She’s coming!” cried the Seelie fighter.

Damnshitfuck, thought Dakotah.

“Free the king and queen,” he yelled, and then ran to meet Samantha.

“Dakotah!” his friends called after him, but he didn’t look back.

He made it to the front of the tree as Samantha and her entourage burst over the clearing. Spotting him, she roared a laugh and swooped toward the ground. She alighted, the Unseelie all around her.

Dakotah had not gotten a good look at her before. Now she strode forward and he had time to take her in. Her skin was tree-like, brown and barky. She had glittering wings, bigger than any other fairy. Clothing made of leaves and flowing scraps of fabric were draped over her. Her most fascinating feature was her hair–if it could be called that. Over a moon-shaped face, prairie grass grew in sweeping waves. Here and there small trees were growing, not horns like Dakotah thought he’d seen before. Flowers bloomed and a light dew covered everything. Small birds flitted around her head.

“Guardian,” Samantha said. Her voice was sour. “Meddler. Did it ever occur to you that the affairs of fairy are not yours to control? Give humans an inch of power and they will take the world with it–”

“Sounds familiar,” interrupted Dakotah.

To his surprise, Samantha laughed. The birds in her hair chirped and the grass looked greener.

“At least I remain in the domain of my people,” she said. “But you, and Icarus, and Sunil–” Her hair was frosting over, leaves dropping from trees, grass turning brown. “Humans should remain subject to the fey, as they were in the past. Like animals, close to the nature magic, knowing naught but fear for us.”

“There have been Guardians just as long as fey,” Dakotah said flatly. Was that true? He had absolutely no idea. His knowledge of Guardianship was limited. A lot of it had come from his own experiences. As uncertain as he sometimes felt, he still knew when he was doing something right. When he took on the powers of the fey around him, it felt natural. When he’d connected with the House, it felt right. When Val had first shown him how to raise the Shield, he’d known he was connecting to something ancient and intrinsic, something that came so easily because it was built into his role. He wished he could just cover the whole army with a shield, but he knew that wouldn’t solve anything in the long term.

But he’d stand there and tell lies about being a Guardian all day if necessary, because all he wanted now was to give his friends time to free the king and queen.

~*~

“We cannot follow,” the Seelie knight said to Pete, Phin, and Val. Both he and the bunny soldier looked sick to their stomachs by the iron tree.

“We’ve got it,” Pete said with her usual confidence.

Phin felt, for once, the same confidence. “Guard the outside,” he ordered. He lifted a hand and parted the metal leaves so Val and Pete could pass through.

He followed and let the leaves fall behind him.

Immediately the noise of battle ceased. They were in the small space between the metal canopy and the trunk. Val looked around them nervously. “Should I be helping Dakotah?”

Phin and Pete hesitated. Finally Phin shook his head. “You know the most about magic. We might run into something weird down here. Dakotah knows how to fight, he can hold her off.”

Pete crouched by the trunk. “Plus, if you go out, Samantha might realize Phin and I are here.” She reached out, hesitating just a moment before putting her hands to the trunk. She curled her fingers around a cool handle and pulled. Part of the tree swung open, revealing a dark interior, also made of iron.

“There’s something–” Val pointed. Pete took a step inside even as Phin’s hand fell on her shoulder.

“A body,” said Pete. A shriveled fairy corpse lay on the ground, its fingers reaching for the door.

“What the fuck happened to it?” Val asked.

Pete looked up. The tree was hollow on the inside. “Maybe one of the builders, poisoned by the iron.”

“Sick.”

They passed the body, and two more, as they walked single file into the tree. After a short distance, metal stairs descended into the ground. Pete, in the lead, looked all around. There was nowhere else to go. She led the way down.

Bunnies don’t have battle magic. It might seem strange, then, that the reputation of the bunny army went before them, and that all respected their skill. But most humans don’t have battle magic either, and you see how well they fight.

So Al-Ysa was unperturbed to fight someone with battle magic. She was too professional to be disdainful, but her nose twitched at Caitlin’s arrogance. In her experience, many relied too heavily on their magic and not enough on skill.

Caitlin lifted her sickles. They glowed with livid orange magic—poison. Al-Ysa backed up, leading Caitlin away from the main battle. Caitlin followed. When Al-Ysa took a quick look over her shoulder, Caitlin lunged.

Smoke spiraled from her chest, enveloping them. Al-Ysa coughed on the smoke, hopping left and right to avoid sickle swipes she couldn’t see.

The fallen Guardian couldn’t see much better, Al-Ysa realized, and she used this. Dropping low, she listened for the sound of Caitlin’s footsteps (hard to distinguish with the sounds of battle all around). She spotted Caitlin. The human was producing more smoke, but it rose into the air faster than she could form it, leaving her booted feet visible.

Keeping low, Al-Ysa moved into position. When the toes turned away, she jumped, hitting Caitlin in the small of her back.

She stabbed with her broken sword, but the human was lucky and twisted away. A sickle scraped her plated shoulder. Magic made the gold ripple and warp but the metal stopped the corruption from reaching her.

Al-Ysa slashed at one hand; Caitlin cried out and dropped her sickle. Al-Ysa kicked it away with one powerful hind leg. Then she called on the magic she did have: nature magic. Without the Seelie king and queen, and this deep in Unseelie territory, she had to nudge and prod the magic into action. But as an animal, her connection was strong, and the tree roots rose up and ensnared Caitlin.

The woman cried out as she was bound flat on her back on the forest floor. She writhed, then tried to spit a spell at Al-Ysa. But the prison was a magical one as well, and no spell could pass the roots. Al-Ysa ripped the other sickle out of Caitlin’s hand.

“Stupid rabbit, you think this will stop me! Kill me now or I will never stop–”

She was cut off by a sound that echoed through the whole forest.

“DAKOTAH,” boomed the voice of the Unseelie Queen.

~*~

The prince scrambled to his feet. He rarely thought of himself as different from any fairy (except, of course, by his rank) but at this moment he desperately wanted wings. As it was, he called on his Hero magic, casting himself in the Divine Light.

Queen Samantha hissed like a wild animal, even though they both knew it wouldn’t help him much. Still, it was a powerfully symbolic spell.

Her staff was her power’s anchor, a tool to support her magic since fairy power was waning without a Seelie to match its Unseelie. The prince knew this and struck not for her, but for her staff.

Samantha sprang to the side. He’d shot at her with light magic, an illusion to make it seem like the Divine Light was coming for her. But she knew the ruse and sent his spell up into the sky, and swung back at him when he watched his spell crash into the air.

Lightning streaked by him, burning his shirt, heating his armor. Electricity set his hair straight up. He closed the distance between them. Samantha sent a blast of fire, but the prince snatched at the threads of the spell, bending it to his will and forming a wall of flame on one side of the clearing. He did not trust the Unseelie troops to fight fair and hopefully the fire would deter them.

He threw up his shield just in time to escape a hail of magic. He didn’t know what she’d fired at him, but his shield smoked and the air smelled rotten. With one last dash, he ran right up to the queen. He thrust his sword for her chest. Samantha blocked with her staff. The sword cut deep into the wood. The prince twisted the blade, trying to snap the staff. Instead, he found the weapon trapped. Viscous purple liquid welled out the staff like a wound, sealing his sword to it.

“Now!” the queen ordered.

The prince released his sword and moved–but he was too slow for the Unseelie demons. They seized him. The prince flailed, to no avail. His hands were bound and he was wrapped in a net in moments.

“You are not the one I want,” Samantha snarled. “Where is the Guardian?”

The prince sneered. “Freeing the true king and queen.”

Samantha looked sharply in the direction of her iron tree. “Quickly!” she called to her army. “Follow me!”

She took flight, and the host of Unseelie rose around her on housefly, beetle, and bat wings.

From her vantage in the sky, the queen enhanced her voice, loud enough to fill a stadium. She drew breath and shouted, “DAKOTAH.”

The battle raged around Commander Al-Ysa. She’d been in dire situations before, but this fight had a tenor unlike any she’d experienced. Her side, the rabbit army and the Seelie fey, fought with desperation. The Unseelie were wickedly gleeful. They had the greater numbers but fought without any coordination in a great melee. Sometimes they helped each other, other times they cared not where their blows landed.

She and Nel, the Seelie prince’s head guard (and now general) had planned for this. Soldiers worked in teams to separate and take down Unseelie fey in small groups. She raced between the chaos, calling orders and fighting when necessary.

“Al-Ysa!”

The voice cracked across the battle and she whirled to see Caitlin, the Unseelie Queen’s right hand woman. A human, Caitlin had painted her face with long black streaks. The black ran into her hair, slicking it back. Her outfit was fey, black as well and decorated in sprays of feathers that almost disguised the blackened chain mail underneath. She looked crow-like, holding two sickles like talons.

Al-Ysa’s nostrils flared. She turned the point of her short sword toward Caitlin.

“You’ve chosen the wrong side, rabbit!” Caitlin called.

The bunny commander was too much of a professional to respond. She leapt for Caitlin. The two clashed. Caitlin’s sickles scraped her blade. Al-Ysa disengaged and thrust for a weak point in Caitlin’s armor. Caitlin blocked, then jumped out of the way as an oily-black Unseelie-rhinoceros fey charged through them. Al-Ysa jumped forward again, using the distraction. She slid between Caitlin’s legs and before the human could turn around, sliced her throat.

Al-Ysa’s blade snapped on the side of Caitlin’s neck. The reverberation went up her arm and she took a step back, clasping a hilt and broken blade.

Caitlin tipped her head back and barked a laugh. “It will take more than that!” The blue-black protection magic shone at her neck. “Come to fight the Unseelie without a shred of magic, Al-Ysa?”

“You dare speak that way to me, when all your powers are stolen?” the commander cried.

The former Guardian’s mouth opened, but not to respond. Between her teeth formed a swirling ball of magic. She thrust her chin at Al-Ysa, and the ball sailed toward the bunny.

She hopped out of the way just in time, for the ball hit the ground and exploded. Debris from the forest floor showered them both. Al-Ysa’s ears twitched, trying to regain her hearing.

“I’ve upgraded!” Caitlin shouted.

~*~

The Seelie prince dodged Unseelie whenever he could. He had one objective: to find the devil-queen. He preferred to do that on his terms, not captured and thrown at her feet. The Unseelie didn’t recognize him, or if they did, they were having too much fun battling to pursue him.

If he could just get to Samantha unscathed, he felt certain he could distract her. She was Unseelie at heart, surely she’d want to gloat.

Soon he was so far into the forest now that Seelie troops had not penetrated this far. Unseelie swooped at him at every turn until he was hemmed in on all sides.

The prince, like all humans in a fey court, had magic only as a gift from the fairies. With the Seelie Queen and King captured, he was not at full power. He threw his magical reserves into a shield and shouted, “Touch me not, dark ones! I come for Samantha!”

Giggling maniacally, they stepped back. A great mass of them followed him as he continued, leering and shouting curses. They knew watching their queen take on the prince would be a show to see.

With this wild entourage he made it to Samantha. The Unseelie Queen stood waiting in front of a grove of skinny trees, their bark black.

“Devil-queen!” the prince called. “You have upset the balance of the fey world and taken a place in fairy not meant for you! I challenge you to a duel.”

He was used to her terrifying visage, having seen it more than once in his youth and now during the protracted war. For the prince, the fight had never ended.

Samantha laughed, and all the Unseelie laughed in sharp echoes. Her teeth were pointed. “Little prince, you are not the human I am concerned with. You brought the Guardian from his Sanctuary, away from the only power strong enough to resist me. Where is Dakotah?”

“Fairy will face fairy!” the prince said.

Samantha’s eyes blazed. “YOU are not fairy, changeling! You are foolish enough to challenge me? The only reason you stand before me is because I could not be bothered to stamp you out earlier.”

“If you are not afraid, then fight!” With these words, the prince blasted magic toward the queen.

In one swift movement, Samantha snatched up the staff at her side. A wave of the staff caught the magic and sent it back toward the prince. He was not quick enough, and the blast blew him off his feet.

In the human world, it was thunderstorming. The weather cast a pall over Other St. Paul as well as they passed through familiar places.

It could have been the overall mood, too. Pete looked around them, catching glimpses of the slowly moving army. It was small, she knew. They would not have a numbers advantage over Samantha.

Most of the army was hidden in an invisibility spell. Still, the fey would could tell they were passing by. Phin caught sight of eyes peering from pools of water or around trees. Maybe some would join them.

Val kept her head down and recited spells to herself. She could only take one grimoire at a time, so she’d chosen the Unseelie grimoire. Whether it would make a difference remained to be seen.

No one spoke much, but Dakotah least of all. Every step took him farther from his Sanctuary, the base of his power. He’d been all over the fey world in the past year but nothing compared to marching with a fairy army. Fairies were the rulers of the fey world, keeping a balance with the human world (especially the natural world, which saw no difference between fey and human really). He could feel their magic, and so could the world around them.

They walked on, out of Other St. Paul, deeper into fairy territory.

At last they reached the edge of a great wood. Trees ten times Dakotah’s height swayed darkly. The fey world was usually bright–gray, but bright. Under the trees was real darkness.

The Seelie Prince turned to Dakotah, nodded once. Dakotah returned the acknowledgment. They might not see each other again. When the army was engaged, someone would direct him to the location of the cage.

The army entered the shadow of the trees. They were loud–trampling leaves and snapping branches, but the invisibility stayed on, at least for now. The prince had explained the conflict between the courts had left plenty of rogue elements about. Dakotah was familiar with this, these allegiance-less fey had been the ones giving him trouble most of the year.

After some time, it was obvious they were being followed. Noises in the branches above them had grown. Whispers of feet or wings, short cackling calls…Dakotah pulled his friends closer.

Pete’s whole body was on edge, waiting for the moment. Al-Ysa hopped a few yards in front of them, paw clenched. She would give the signal.

Then an Unseelie fey swooped down from tree cover. It looked like a Pokemon–comically large mouth on a bulbous, winged body. It snarled. Al-Ysa’s paw fell.

Instantly, the invisibility spell was removed, and their army attacked. The Pokemon fey was shot down first by ten arrows; the rest aimed for the trees. The Unseelie army collapsed on them from above, creating a fray.

Dakotah didn’t see any more. Their invisibility stayed intact as a contingent of bunny soldiers hustled them away from the action. A single fairy guide took them around the battle, into the forest.

For a while they could hear the battle, and catch glimpses of the fighting. Then the glimpses faded, and then the sounds, and they were left wending through the trees alone.

This deep into the forest, the trees grew taller and taller. The underbrush disappeared, making it easier to walk. Still, it didn’t remind Dakotah of the forests up north. Maybe it was his own mood, but the stillness here wasn’t peaceful.

After only ten minutes’ walking, they arrived at a large clearing. At the head of the clearing sat a tree larger than any they’d seen before. They’d never see this kind of tree in Minnesota.

Its roots are as thick as my body, Pete thought in amazement.

The fairy signaled that they’d walk along the treeline instead of crossing the open clearing. The tree only got more stunning the closer they moved. Its trunk was massive, covered in steely bark. Flowers grew at its base, roots arched out of the ground and then plunged back below the earth. Silver leaves hung in silent waves like a willow tree.

They came around behind the tree, and their fairy guide stopped. He put branch-like fingers to his temple.

“Are you alright?” Phin asked.

“We are here,” said the guide. “The iron’s power is strong.”

“What iron?”

The guide pointed at the tree.

Realizing first, Val’s hand reached out and grabbed one of the branches of silver leaves. Holding it up to the others, they saw each leaf was exquisitely carved out of iron, the branches iron wire, the steely-gray tree actually made out of metal.

“Whoa,” said Phin, taking a branch of his own to examine.

“So where are the king and queen?” Dakotah asked.

The guide pointed to the roots. “Under the tree…we think.”

“You think–” Dakotah started, but one of the bunny soldiers interrupted.

“Guardian, we’ve detected movement–”

A voice, high and terrible, boomed throughout the clearing. “DAKOTAH.”

Dakotah spent the last two weeks of June under a haze. The air seemed to be humming with a coming storm. Once his mom surprised him and he jumped practically a foot. He reduced the shop’s hours because he didn’t want too many strangers coming through. Finally he closed it entirely.

He didn’t need the money; the basement held more money than he could ever spend. But it meant the days were filled with nothing but scattered research into fairies and then just…waiting.

One day his accountant stopped answering the phone. He went by Morticia’s but the lights were dark. The elven village by the train tracks was just as deserted. He dared not stay long in these places, for fear the Unseelie Queen would catch him in the fey world. He didn’t think she’d attack him in the human world, it wouldn’t be to her advantage. If they were going to fight anywhere, he hoped it would be in Other St. Paul. The places where the fey and human worlds overlapped might give him an edge.

But he didn’t really know if they were going to fight or not. He’d been doing his job as a Guardian, taking in refugees. Should he seek out Samantha? Was it suicide to face a fairy queen? He didn’t know enough about the fey world to tell if their powers were evenly matched.

One evening he sat on the back porch when a rocket of energy went through the Sanctuary. He shot to his feet, granting access as he did. He ran through the shop, getting to the front in time to see the Seelie Prince stumble through his door.

Maybe thirty soldiers crowded in behind the prince. His friends, the bunny army, and the refugees ranged behind him. The shop was packed.

The prince raised a head weakly. He was supported by two soldiers, a bloody slash across his chest.

“You’re alive,” said Dakotah.

A slight grin crossed the prince’s face. It faded quickly. “I need medical attention. Then we must speak.”

Al-Ysa’s organization had already set aside an area to be used as a hospital bay. The fairy warriors and prince were tended to there. In an hour, despite protests from the fey healers, the prince called for Dakotah. For privacy, Dakotah led him to Ike’s old room.

“Guardian,” the prince said as he settled on the edge of the bed. “I apologize. I had no way to return your missives. Thank you for sending them.”

Dakotah nodded once. Gone was the cocky rebel leader he’d met a few months ago. The prince was a drawn boy with serious eyes, his face pinched with pain.

“I come to you for…help. Your kind are supposed to remain neutral, I know.”

Dakotah frowned. He hadn’t realized that. All year he’d been taking sides, fighting off fey he thought acted wrongly. All this time he was supposed to be neutral? When they’d said he was “too involved” he didn’t realize that meant “biased”. What would Ike think?

“What do you need?”

“I found them. My parents. I found them.”

“Where?”

“Deep in the fey world, in the devil-queen’s forest.”

“We can help.”

Dakotah and the prince looked up in surprise. Pete, Phin, and Val stood in the doorway.

Pete had spoken, of course. Dakotah smiled at her.

She returned the look. “Dakotah can go back to being neutral after we get rid of Samantha.”

“Seriously,” agreed Val. “She has to go.”

“What do we need to do?” asked Phin.

“The Seelie King and Queen are in a cage made of iron. It can only be opened by a human. I cannot–as a changeling I have been..away…too long. We must distract the Unseelie Queen long enough to free them. Once freed, I believe their power will be enough to take on the devil-queen. Last time they were defeated by Samantha and Sunil’s combined forces.”

“That whole plan rests on the king and queen being strong enough to defeat Samantha,” Phin said. “They’ve been captured for a year. What if they’re weak?”

“The fey draw their power from the natural world,” the prince explained. “The forest has suffered from their absence. It will greet them with abundance. All our powers will be rejuvenated. Our soldiers will engage the Unseelie army. I will distract Samantha. You will unlock the cage.”

“And what happened…” Dakotah gestured to the prince’s injuries.

He made a face. “Ambushed by Unseelie soldiers. Our army was greatly decimated, both by death and desertion. A final call to action will hopefully rally others to our side.”

His word “hopefully” hung in the air.

~*~

“Read to me everything we know about the Unseelie,” Dakotah said. They were undergoing the awkward process of being fitted for armor. Awkward, because he felt ridiculous wearing armor at all, and also because everything was three sizes too small. Between the bunnies and the fairies there wasn’t much to fit a human. They had pillaged the shop for everything that could help them and were using small magic where they could.

“We’ve got ten minutes,” Phin said to Pete. They were due at a family Fourth of July party.

Val started to read her grimoire. “Unseelie is the power of unmaking. It is in this that their power flows strongest.” She looked up. “How can we use that? Samantha’s trying to make an empire, it’s against her powers.”

Dakotah shrugged. “Not really making any difference, is it? She’s killin’ it out there.”

“Seriously,” Pete said. With the arrival of the crown prince, they’d learned the full extent of the state of fairyland. It wasn’t just Dakotah’s little pocket being affected.

He felt like he’d missed some important part of being a Guardian. Yes, his shop was stuffed full of refugees who thanked him daily, and yes, they had a battle plan, but he didn’t feel in control of the situation. He hadn’t felt in control for a year but at least he’d been feeling better about it. There were wide gaps in his knowledge and every time he did something with the fey he found more gaps. Here they were, going into a war, without a complete understanding of how Hero magic worked! He knew his magic a little better, but only because it felt like there was so little of it. And he didn’t struggle to learn his skills like Phin and Pete. He been able to make a Guardian shield the first time Val had told him about it, but he couldn’t shield the whole army. Even though he and his friends weren’t going to fight themselves, it made him nervous.

And what would Ike think? How had he banished Sunil the first time? Had he fought?

With a sign, Dakotah cast off wondering if Ike would approve. There wasn’t any way to say. All he could do was meet this situation as best he could. But he still wished the old man were around to help.

Got a little behind with my St. Paul Grimoire posts! But everything is up to date now. Read the next installment here.

Oddly, it was the editing that was taking me a while to do, which is weird because I don’t edit the SPG installments very heavily…but another project has been eating up most of my editing time: my second novel!

That’s right, DANA will be out by the end of this year. I already have the cover and it is another beautiful one 🙂 I’m keeping it under wraps…unless you are a newsletter subscriber, in which case you’ll soon get to see it before anyone else!

There wasn’t much room around the cave to set up, or do recon. They tread water below the mouth. Finally Al-Ysa decided her soldiers would go first and last, with the humans in the middle.

“We can fight,” Pete said.

“Protect the Guardian,” Al-Ysa ordered. “If we meet with trouble, get him and the Archivist out.”

It took them a minute to realize she meant Val.

“If anything happens, get Val out first,” Dakotah said. “She’s the only one without magic.”

“I’m the one with all the knowledge!” Val protested. “How will these two fight without me?”

Dakotah looked at Phin. “Get Val out first.”

Val glared.

“Whatever,” said Phin with a shrug. “If shit goes down, I’m gonna be the first out that cave.”

Val giggled, but Al-Ysa interrupted. “Are we ready?”

“Lead the way,” Dakotah said. He tried to screw his head on straight. They didn’t know what they were getting into.

“No more talking,” commanded Al-Ysa, and she waved a few soldiers up the cliff.

Dakotah couldn’t tell if it was easier or harder for the bunny army to get up the cliff. The rabbits moved fast and needed smaller footholds. But the teens climbed much faster with their longer bodies.

At the cave, they filed in, pressed against the side. Al-Ysa communicated to her soldiers through quick ear flicks. Before them, the cave was a black hole.

“We need light,” Val hissed as a few bunnies hopped into the darkness.

“Lumos,” said Phin, and the humans dissolved into hushed, nervous laughter. They fell silent as Al-Ysa sent them a glare.

“Remain here,” she said. “We will clear the cave.”

The bunnies disappeared into the cave, and the humans were forced to wait. Dakotah’s eyes strained in the dark, hearing heightened. But he still couldn’t tell what was happening.

Suddenly, light bloomed. Phin started. The light bobbed unevenly as it approached–and revealed a bunny soldier with a lantern.

“Come quick,” said the soldier.

Dakotah practically stepped on the soldier’s heels to get further into the cave. Finally the tunnel came to an end and opened into a wide, low space. A bed of coals and kindling took up most of the floor space. The air was damp and reeked.

Al-Ysa hopped up. “We’ve secured the area, Guardian. This is the extent of the cave.”

“So there’s nothing here.”

“Come to this side.”

They followed Al-Ysa. The lantern bobbed forward too, revealing a wall of hooks. Off the hooks, bright stones hung off leather straps. They were all cuts and colors, from smooth agates or unpolished green and white jade. Dakotah saw blue sea glass and red limestone.

It took only a moment to determine his House’s purple quartz Heart was not among the necklaces. Still, Dakotah was enraged. His hand snapped out to grab a necklace. The moment his fingers got close, a ripple of electricity shot through him, throwing him across the cave.

The girls screamed as Dakotah’s body cracked against the far wall.

There wasn’t much time to react. The electricity in the air did not fade. It gained power, making everyone’s hair stand on end. It started to take on shape, lightning forming in bright bursts. A bolt hit the nest of coals and dry kindling, sparking a fire.

Smoke formed over the flames.

Val and Phin were helping Dakotah to his feet. Pete had stopped on her way. The smoke boiled, growing faster than the flames. Deep in the clouds, lit by flashes of lightning, Pete could see a woman’s face appear. Dark eyes glared out of a moon-round face patterned like tree bark. Her hair was grass–literally, long prairie grass in shades of brown and green. Birds darted in between the blades and small trees were growing. She wore a crown of leafless branches.

Queen Samantha caught Pete’s eye and raised a hand. Lightning started to collect between her twig-like fingers. She threw the lightning at Pete.

A horde of bunny soldiers tackled Pete and the lightning sailed over them to hit the cave wall.
Sound rushed back into Pete’s ears. Al-Ysa was roaring for a retreat. A grey-faced Dakotah leaned heavily on Phin. Unseelie fairies crowded around Samantha, jeering at them.

Samantha formed another lightning ball and lobbed it through the cloud portal, this time towards where two soldiers urged Val down the tunnel. Pete launched to her feet. She caught the lightning ball, swung in a circle, and tossed it back through the portal. Samantha and her Unseelie soldiers were forced to leap out of the way.

This gave them a moment to dash down the tunnel.

Val’s heart jumped to her throat at the thought of having to jump into the black Mississippi. But before anyone reached the end of the tunnel, the Lake appeared before them. The canoe, bobbing at the border, morphed into a large motorboat. The rabbits didn’t slow: the vanguard hopped into the boat in a rapid but orderly fashion. The humans clambered on next, followed by the rest of the rabbits. Phin dropped Dakotah on a seat and turned the key.

The motorboat threw them all backward as it leaped into action. The human world faded away and for a moment they were enveloped by the absolute silence of the Lake.

“Get in formation!” Al-Ysa yelled, moments before the Unseelie court burst into the air.

There were easily a hundred of them, fairies with wild faces, demons, restless spirits on a wild hunt. Some rode horses with skeleton faces across the sky. Samantha rode a black carriage pulled by black swans. One hand held a whip, the other a long leash leading to a muzzle on the Great Salamandra, its wing patched where Pete had hit it. Coals spilled from its mouth and rained on the Unseelie fey, who did not seem to notice. Caitlin rode a beetlelike thing, laughing as she spun magic into a swirling tornado of air.

“Kill them!” yelled the Unseelie Queen, her voice catching like thunder and echoing all around them.
Caitlin released the tornado.

Val took the wheel so Phin could join the bunnies and Pete. They raised their hands to begin a spell–but Dakotah grabbed Phin’s shoulder.

“Don’t!” he said to Al-Ysa before she could command her soldiers to fire. “There’s too many! I’ll do it!”
“Dakotah!” yelled Pete as the tornado bore down.

“You don’t have fighting magic!” Phin said. His hands went up.

“We’re not fighting,” Dakotah said. Then he spoke the words to the one Guardian spell more powerful than any magic there.

The tornado hit his shield and vanished. Caitlin screamed from her perch. She knew a Guardian’s protection could not be shaken.

The Unseelie Court screeched and wailed and hollered, raining insults and abuses at the motorboat and its passengers. But none dared try the glittering shield, and the swarm of them soon turned and flew off over the Lake.